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Monday, May 25, 2009

Group Home Teens Recruited to Prostitution

Note from a member of the community with Canadian Press article as printed in the Hamilton Spectator article to follow.

Recruiting Hookers

May 22, 2009

Andrea Horwath is calling for an inquest into the quality of care in group homes following a case in which a fifteen-year-old girl left a home to go into prostitution.

So what keeps a girl from becoming a prostitute? Or any other teen on the straight and narrow? One force, from the teen's point of view, is: "My parents would be (ashamed/angry/hurt) if they found out I was a (prostitute/shoplifter/junkie)". Well, this force doesn't operate in the group home, where there are no parents. Looked at another way, it is impossible to follow the biblical injunction to honor your parents when you don't have any. Group home residents have had the full weight of the law used to separate them from their parents, and every other remnant of their family. The legal parent, a social worker, can make contracts on behalf of the child, but she sees her ward only monthly, and her identity shifts with staff changes at children's aid. And what sort of a bond does a child develop with the social worker? Here is an (offensive) example. It is not the kind of bond that will get the child to stay in good graces. For group home children, the most important behavioral inhibition has been cut off.

An inquest, if held, is unlikely to deal with the serious problems, instead focusing on trivialities such as staff training, or bashing of pimps.

The Canadian Press

Teenage girls easy prey for pimps lurking outside

Recruiting Hookers

TORONTO — A public inquiry must be held into the quality of care in Ontario’s group homes where teenaged girls continue to be easy prey for pimps who lurk outside, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said today.

Two young men were arrested this week for allegedly luring a 15-year-old girl from a Mississauga group home, giving her fake identification and forcing her to serve up sex in a strip club.

The teen was the latest in a long list of girls who police say have been plucked from group homes with promises of a glamorous lifestyles, then forced to prostitute themselves and give all their cash to pimps.

“They want to be loved. They are missing something. They have never had the sense of belonging and that’s where the attraction for the gangs, the attraction for the pimps, attraction for any kind of structure, even if it is damaging and negative, (comes from),” said Inas Garwood, executive director of Streetlights Support Services in Toronto, who works with many juvenile prostitutes who came from group homes.

“Yes, they (group homes) give routine, they give meals and they give basic needs, but the emotional and psychological aspects are not found.”

Group homes are often part of a long chain of command — the provincial government contracts work to Children’s Aid Societies, which contract work to independent agencies — that lacks a standard of care across the board, Garwood said.

Annual checks and balances include documentation of health and safety but don’t make homes accountable for counselling services and life skills training, Garwood said.

“There’s a complete lack of standards around the care that’s provided in foster care and in group homes,” Horwath said.

Two years ago, Ontario’s child advocate of the time, Judy Finlay, penned a report that looked at the quality of care provided through residential services of the Children’s Aid Societies of Toronto, Peel Region and Thunder Bay.

The first of Finlay’s 26 recommendations was, “that there be a public inquiry into the standards and quality of care afforded children in state care across Canada.”

“The inquiry needs to happen ... and the commitment from government to make the change,” Horwath said.

Deb Matthews, minister of children and youth services, said she is “extremely concerned about kids who are in our care.”

But a public inquiry into their care is “not something that I will be moving forward with right now,” she said from Calgary.

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General Information

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CAS Board Meetings

Call your CAS to find out when their regular Board of Directors meetings are held and how you can attend to watch and participate. If you experience any resistance to your attendance call the Council at 613-220-1039 for support.

For example: Ottawa CASThe Ottawa CAS Board meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month at the Head Office of the CAS at 1602 Telesat Court, Ottawa, ON, at 5:30pm in the Gloucester Room of the Society. (a short walk over the glass tunnel from Blair Transitway Station (away from the Mall not toward it)

Simply go into the main office of the CAS if doors are unlocked or buzz security if they are locked, then just sign in at the front desk telling Security you are there to attend the Board meeting.

When you sign in, the sheet asks who invited you, or who your contact person is, just put Barbara MacKinnon as she is the Executive Director and as head of the corporation offers an open invitation to the public to attend in accordance with their internal By-Laws. You can learn more by calling the Ottawa CAS at 613-747-7800 and ask for the Executive Office.